In collaboration with UNFPA-Lebanon, the minister of public health in the caretaker government, Ghassan Hasbani, launched yesterday the 5-year National Strategy for Family Planning and the National Campaign for Awareness on Reproductive Health. Hasbani pointed to more than one million beneficiaries since 2016 from the ministry’s social welfare centers. Meanwhile, UNFPA revealed that in many incidences of pregnancy which reached care centers women did not undergo early medical examinations, particularly Syrian refugee girls and women. Hence, the campaign for awareness on reproductive health was released in order to avoid such cases and for better family planning. Services provided at primary care centers included, maternity and infant health, family planning and birth spacing, mammography, prostate screening and detection and treatment of infections and reproductive diseases. To note, such services are available at 225 centers across Lebanon. In this respect, Al Akhbar newspaper wrote that most of the centers, totaling 56, are located in Mount Lebanon, dropping to only 20 centers in each of Beqaa, and Baalbak- Hermel governorates, noting that they receive a large number of beneficiaries from the refugee camps targeted by the above campaign, in addition to Lebanese residents. Al Akhbar concluded by saying that the distribution is not quite consistent with Hasbani’s statement on the ‘preemtive and preventive measures’ to be taken to avoid what was described as the ‘ticking time bomb’ created by the absence of family planning at the level of the Lebanese host and Syrian refugee communities. (Al Akhbar, December 13, 2018)
